


Plausible Deniability

by doctor__idiot



Series: SPN Kink Bingo 2017 [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: College, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Supernatural Kink Bingo 2017, prompt, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 17:18:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11696286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctor__idiot/pseuds/doctor__idiot
Summary: Charlie knocks over her coffee mug when the door slams open and in tumbles Joanna, covered in dirt and some other slimy substance that Charlie would rather not inspect any closer. Joanna’s cradling her left arm to her chest while her other hand is glued to her abdomen, pressing down on what’s most definitely a stab wound.





	Plausible Deniability

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "The city's superhero and his/her adversary are roommates without knowing the other's secret identity. Bonus: They are attracted to each other/dating."
> 
> I read the prompt wrong so now I've got two superheroes instead of a good guy and a bad guy – pardon, _girl_ – but oh well.
> 
> Written for the [SPN Kink Bingo](http://spnkinkbingo.tumblr.com) square "CharlieJo".

Charlie knocks over her coffee mug when the door slams open and in tumbles Joanna, covered in dirt and some other slimy substance that Charlie would rather not inspect any closer. Joanna’s cradling her left arm to her chest while her other hand is glued to her abdomen, pressing down on what’s most definitely a stab wound.

Charlie is out of her desk chair so fast she gets dizzy for a second. “Jesus, Jo, what happened?”

Joanna is wheezing and slightly unsteady on her feet. Charlie rushes toward her, catching her against her own side before she collapses. Meanwhile, the spilled coffee is staining Charlie’s course notes and steadily dripping off the desk’s surface, seeping into the carpet.

“I,” Joanna coughs, “fell down the stairs.”

It’s bullshit and they both know it.

“Some stairs,” Charlie says and helps her best friend sit down on the edge of the couch.

This isn’t a new development, it has been happening for a while. Joanna shows up with new cuts and bruises almost every other day. Charlie know she likes to skateboard and isn’t exactly careful, so she tries not to worry, but a knife wound is something entirely different. And that shoulder Joanna is holding very, _very_ still definitely looks dislocated.

“Hell,” Charlie says, “You need a hospital, what are you doing here?”

Joanna’s already shaking her head before Charlie can finish her sentence. “No need, I’ll be fine.”

“ _Fine_?” Charlie is trying not to sound hysterical but her voice comes out high-pitched. “You’re not _fine._ You’re not even in the same zip code as _fine_ , you idiot, we gotta–”

Joanna coughs again and that’s when Charlie’s attention shifts to the wound in her abdomen. She snaps her mouth shut and urges Joanna to lean back. She groans along with the movement and Charlie can’t avert her eyes from the steady spill of dark crimson pouring from between slender fingers.

Joanna nudges her, “Hey, I’m fine, I swear, just–”

Charlie is already nodding, ridding herself of paralysis. “I’ll be right back,” she croaks and dashes into the bathroom to raid the shelves for their first-aid kit. They’ve had to use it decidedly too much lately. 

Joanna has got her eyes closed, her head tipped back, neck a curved line of pale skin against the back of the couch. Charlie’s fingers curl hard around the bottle of iodine in her hand. “Jo?”

She blinks her eyes open, “Yeah, sorry,” she says, her breathing a little too shallow and controlled and Charlie hurries to kneel in front of her, peeling her fingers and the soaked hem of her shirt away from the stomach wound. There is still wine-red blood trickling from it but it’s not pulsing or anything that would indicate that it’s worse than it looks.

Joanna’s bloody fingers twitch where she’s got her hand resting next to her hip while Charlie cleans the wound. 

“Can your shoulder wait until I’ve stitched this?” Charlie ask without looking up. Joanna hums in reply and Charlie take it as a ‘yes’.

Wincing with every piercing of the needle Charlie tries to think about what she’s doing as little as possible, stitching her best friend up in the middle of their dorm room after what was clearly a serious fight.

She cleans the finished row of stitches again – it’s not as neat as it could have been but she can’t seem to make her hands stop shaking – and applies the gauze, stark white against Joanna’s skin. 

“Alright,” she says, wiping her hands on her shorts, “All done.”

She looks up at Joanna, trying to gauge how much pain she is in. “Are you sure about me setting your shoulder? I think we should–”

Joanna interrupts her with her trademark half-smirk but it doesn’t have the same effect as usual, slightly tense around the edges and against the backdrop of her ashen face. “It’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“I’m a a medical student, Jo, not a doctor.”

“I’ve got endless confidence in your skills.”

Charlie huffs a breath, sending her bangs flying against her forehead. “That makes one of us.”

Joanna smiles again, a little more genuine this time and then leans forward, angling her bad shoulder toward Charlie.

“On three?” she says and Charlie nods, slotting her palm against the dislocated shoulder joint. “One,” she counts, “two, _three_.”

Joanna squeezes her eyes shut, body tense and awaiting the pain, while Charlie does nothing. Joanna cracks one of her eyes open, staring at Charlie with furrowed brows. “What are you waiting for?”

That’s when Charlie snaps her shoulder into place. Joanna shouts, collapsing into the couch cushion, holding her arm, face distorted with agony.

“Bitch,” she presses through gritted teeth. Charlie lets her ride it out, keeping her grounded with a palm on her thigh while she struggles to regulate her breathing.

She sits back up with a pained moan, blonde hair disheveled and falling into her eyes. “God, I feel like shit.”

“You look it, too,” Charlie says because that’s her job as a best friend but there’s still the tell-tale gnawing of worry in her stomach, wondering what happened and, more than anything, why Joanna won’t tell her.

It’s not like she doesn’t keep secrets from Joanna but it’s never been this bad before. Her hands still haven’t stopped trembling.

~*~*~

It’s late, almost three o’clock in the morning, when Charlie manages to stumble her way home. It’s definitely too late to be as noisy as she is while trying to rid herself of her suit – something that’s not exactly an easy feat with only one working hand – and soon she finds Joanna standing in the doorway to her room, illuminated by the hallway light and sleepily rubbing her eyes.

“The fuck?” she asks inelegantly, voice sleep-rough, and if her broken fingers weren’t hurting so much, Charlie would probably blush at seeing her in nothing but her underwear and a rucked-up, healed knife wound a zigzag scar above her hipbone, a pinkish flaw against her otherwise smooth skin. 

Charlie is simply too exhausted to be distracted by her best friend’s beauty tonight. She tries not to look too closely.

“Go to bed,” she says, “I‘m sorry for waking you.”

Joanna shakes her head, “Fuck that,” and approaches her. Charlie quickly steps back, kicking her suit into the space between bed and closet, where it’s less detectable, before she realizes that she’s not really wearing anything, either.  
“Do you mind,” she says, making her voice sound harsher than she’s feeling, and it has the intended effect. Joanna stops five feet away from her and Charlie turns around to grab some pajamas.

She realizes her mistake when Joanna sucks in a breath behind her. “What the hell happened to you?”

Charlie closes her eyes. She completely forgot about the claw and bite marks on her shoulders and back. As if on cue, they trickle back into her consciousness, aching and smarting with every movement.

“Rough night?” Joanna asks then with a hint of something in her voice that Charlie can’t quite decipher and it’s the excuse she’s been looking for but been too tired to come up with.

“Sure,” she says, purposely casual. “Awesome night.” She turns around and makes herself grin at Joanna. “You should see the other one.”

Joanna grins back – because it’s what a best friend does – but it doesn’t look entirely real. Whether it’s because she disapproves or because she doesn’t believe her, Charlie don’t know and she’s not willing to keep prodding it tonight.

“Well,” she says, “Goodnight?”

Joanna visibly starts as if she’s surprised by the brush-off. “Oh, right. Night.” Scratching her chin, she regards Charlie for another moment and then closes the door behind her on her way out.

Charlie sinks to the edge of the mattress with a relieved sigh. She’s been trying not to limp too much in front of Joanna and now her knee is aching even more than it was before. She gives it a quick rub.

She should probably find something to splint her fractured fingers with but she’s too tired to get back up and they’re going to be all healed up in the morning anyway, even if they might heal a little crooked. She is just glad the wounds on her back have begun to knit back together already or they wouldn’t have passed as nail prints to Joanna, born from the heat of passion instead of the claw marks from some alien were-creature.

She rolls out her shoulders, practically feeling the skin regenerating, and since she don’t have to worry about infections she bypasses going to the bathroom and rubbing some salve in, and simply collapses into the pillows instead.

The last thing flitting through her mind before she goes to sleep is the reminder that while her skin may be back to being smooth and scarless tomorrow, her suit is going to need sowing up.

She is terribly bad at sowing.

~*~*~

Charlie’s reflexes aren’t bad per se, far from, but sometimes it’s difficult for her to focus on more than one thing at a time and she really doesn’t see the car speeding toward her. It’s not like it can actually hurt her in any way that’s not rectifiable and that’s exactly why she gets careless at times.

But those other times, she’s always been alone and no one was there to witness her getting suspiciously not-hurt or not-hurt-enough but right now it’s the middle of rush hour and she has already surrendered herself to the situation.

It’s one of those moments where you can see what’s going to happen, like dropping a mug and knowing it’s going to shatter in about half a second but at the same time being aware of your own powerlessness. You can’t do anything about it because your muscles simply don’t work quickly enough while you’re brain has already reached the foreseen conclusion.

Collision. A direct hit is inevitable.

But before Charlie even has time to brace herself to the pain of impact and the shattering of bones, she’s being whisked back by her waist against something unyielding but indefinitely more comfortable than a car traveling at forty miles per hour. 

“What the–” she manages because the person who pulled her out of the proverbial line of fire turns her around and she is faced with a woman in a black mask.

Instantly, she feels familiar, and not just because of the mask. How could Charlie not know about that mask since it’s all over the goddamn media – they’re constantly calling her her ‘rival’ but she isn’t, not really, because they’re never in the same place at the same time, ultimately different skill sets – but it’s not just the mask, it’s everything. Her build, the hands on Charlie’s shoulders, even the line of her mouth that’s just visible through the mask, there’s something…

“Shit,” she says, and Charlie’s stomach drops.

“Jo?”

She instantly lets go of Charlie, even pushes her back a little – counter-productive after just having saved her from what she surely thinks would’ve been certain death – and she barely catches herself and stays on her feet.

“ _Shit_ ,”the woman says again, more emphasis this time, and then whirls around and takes off skywards.

Charlie lowers herself to the curb, safely out of reach of oncoming cars, and swallows the hysterical laugh that’s threatening to bubble up and out of her throat.

  
When she gets home, she can barely make it through the door before Joanna is on her. “I’m _so_ sorry,” she says, almost tripping over herself in her attempt to apologize. 

She has changed out of her suit, just wearing a pair of ratty jeans and an old Creedence shirt, and she’s Joanna again, so familiar, and yet Charlie feels like she’s looking at her differently now, like through a set of new glasses after years of bad eyesight.

“I should have told you.” Joanna looks absolutely miserable. “I just never found the right time, but I should’ve anyway, there’s no right time for–”

Charlie bursts out laughing.

Joanna stops talking immediately. “What are you–?”

Charlie waves her away. Still chortling and not able to stop anytime soon, she makes her way to the couch and collapses onto it, holding her side that’s starting to hurt from laughing so hard but there’s just no way to stop.

“You’re freaking me out,” Joanna says, “Talk to me.”

She actually sounds genuinely concerned and all of a sudden it’s not funny anymore. Charlie presses her hand against her mouth, stifling the last few giggles, before sobering up. She’s wipes away some stray tears from the corners of her eyes. 

“It’s–Nothing, it’s just–We’re idiots.”

Joanna makes a sound that could be agreement but she’s probably just scared of Charlie at the moment and prepared to go with anything she says. 

Charlie shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. For not telling me, I mean.”

“Why not?”

“Because–” She sighs. “I’ll show you.”

She gets up from the couch, kicking open the door of her room that’s standing ajar, pushing her school backpack out of the way with her foot, and opens her closet.

Joanna is hovering in the door frame, clearly prepared to either fight or take flight if Charlie should turn out to be a maniacal serial killer after all.

She grabs her suit from the back of the closet, crooked stitches where she repaired if after the fabric got shredded. She holds it up in front of her, dangling the mask from her index finger.

Joanna is silent. Then she opens her mouth but Charlie isn’t sure whether she intended to actually have something come out of it. In any case, she closes it before anything can.

Finally, she says, “I should’ve known.”

Charlie lowers her arms, letting her suit rustle to the floor. “What do you mean?”

“Because the _Red Wolf_ ,” Joanna makes air quotes around the moniker and Charlie isn’t sure whether she should be offended, “has been a royal pain in the ass. I really should’ve known that’s you.”

Okay, offended is definitely the way to go. Charlie squints at her. “Oh, alright, Mrs. _Angel of the_ freaking _Night_.” She adopts the air quotes and exaggerates them. “I really don’t know where they got that from because there’s literally nothing that’s farther from the truth than ‘angel’.”

“Hey now,” Joanna says, coming closer, her mouth a pressed line.

“If they knew how bad you are at picking up after yourself, seriously, I still occasionally find some of your dirty socks in between the couch cushions. Like, how old are you, fourteen?”

Joanna narrows her eyes at her, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“And your cooking?” Charlie continues, jabbing her finger into Joanna’s sternum to emphasize her point, “It’s god-awful. I can’t fathom how someone’s been going through life without being able to whip up something as simple as mac’n’cheese. That’s seriously pathetic.”

Joanna grabs her finger before she can poke her again, keeping a hold of it. “Are you done?”

Charlie exhales in a huff. “I think so.”

“Good,” Joanna says, and Charlie nearly loses her balance when Joanna pushes forward into her space, making her move back on instinct. Charlie trips over her backpack that she stupidly kicked there herself, shooting her arms out for something to grab onto and the first thing she finds are Joanna’s shoulders. Joanna steadies her by her elbows.

“Some superhero,” she says, dry as the desert, and before Charlie can protest the audacity of it, Joanna leans in and kisses her.

Her first impulse is to jerk away, she’s too surprised, it’s too sudden, but Joanna still has a hold on her arms and Charlie doesn’t get far. Her eyes are wide opposite Joanna’s closed ones and it barely lasts more than two seconds before Joanna pulls away.

“I, um–” Charlie says, “Okay–um, what–Hm.” She clicks her mouth shut before more idiocy has the chance to spill from it.

“Okay?” Joanna is looking at her and it’s probably the first time in her life that Charlie has actually seen her nervous, complete with a slight flush in her cheeks and the worrying of her bottom lip. It only serves to draw Charlie’s gaze to the flash of her white teeth against pink softness.

“Yeah,” Charlie manages, “Okay,” because hell _yes_ , most definitely okay, and this time they’re both leaning in at the same time, and while the first kiss wasn’t anything more than a dry press of lips, the second one is something that actually deserves to be called a kiss.

Joanna cradles Charlie’s face in her palms, tilting her chin up to fit their mouths together, and she kisses with her whole body, angling her hips into Charlie’s. Charlie reaches up to cup her hand around the back of her neck, keeping her close while she nips her lower lip, licks past her teeth, and Joanna responds in kind, wrapping her arms around Charlie.

“You know,” Charlie says, pulling back, “I don’t even know where they got the ‘wolf’ part from. I’m not even–I like to think of myself as more _catlike_. Like a leopard or something, that’d be cool.”

Joanna gives an impatient sound that makes it clear she isn’t listening to a word Charlie saying. She leans back in and Charlie stops her with a hand on her collarbone.

“No, seriously, how do you get your species mixed up like that, it’s ridiculous –” 

Charlie is being kissed again before she can finish the sentence and maybe that should piss her off but she was rambling anyway, only talking because actually thinking about this, _realizing_ that, holy shit, this is Joanna she’s kissing, _Jo,_ who’s been her best friend for … forever, kind of, and it’s not only the superhero thing that’s freaking her out, it’s the fact that this could ruin _everything._

“Stop thinking,” Joanna says, not unkindly, and then Charlie is being lifted, Joanna’s hands under her thighs hoisting her up against her front and Charlie clings to her.

She says, “Just because I know who you are now and I know this is easy for you, it doesn’t mean you have to be a show-off.”

Joanna grins up at her and Charlie is unable to stop herself from smiling back. It’s almost too wide to fit on her face, almost hurts, too giddy, and it’s almost terrifying how good this feels. She is bursting with happiness and it scares her to death.

“I said stop fucking thinking,” Joanna says and then the world tips on its axis when she throws Charlie down onto her bed, into the midst of clothes of the day before that are still lying strewn around.

As she crawls over her, Charlie smack her in the shoulder. “No one likes a bragger.”

Joanna is staring down at her, her mouth red from kissing, hair and eyes wild, and says, “You sure?” and it’s most definitely a challenge.

  
Later, Charlie is getting some water from the kitchen as it all begins to finally sink in. Her fingers curl around the glass she’s holding and she has to force herself to relax her grip before it bursts against her palm.

She pads back to her room on bare feet where Joanna’s sleeping half-covered by the blanket and still naked and Charlie stands there, allowing herself to just look for one peaceful moment. She feels like something should have changed, there should have been some sort of epiphany, or maybe the earth’s crust should have cracked and shattered. It feels too important but it’s the same as ever.

Joanna is the same as ever. And so is Charlie.

“I know you’re there,” Joanna says with her eyes closed and Charlie jumps, managing not to spill any of the water. “You’re skulking. Get back in here.”

She holds up the duvet and with a sigh Charlie slides back under it, setting the glass of water down on the nightstand after taking a few sips.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Joanna says as she curls around her, rubbing her thumb against the inside of her elbow.

Charlie shakes her head, more to clear it than in negation. “I’m just thinking that–that now we’re–” She stops, realizing that in truth she doesn’t know what they are. She can feel uneasiness bubbling up, clogging her throat, and she tries to swallow around it.

Joanna squeezes her arm and hooks her chin over her shoulder, pressing a soft kiss against the edge of Charlie’s jaw.

Charlie sighs. “I’m thinking that if one of us is found out now, the other one’s…”

“Gonna be found out, too?” Joanna finishes for her and she nods.

She doesn’t really expect Joanna to respond, she’s mostly just thinking– _worry_ ing aloud, like she generally tends to do. Joanna simply says, “I understand.”

It’s not a solution and there can’t possibly be one, not right now, not so soon, but she’s telling Charlie she’s with her and if there’s a solution they’ll find it together. And if there are consequences they will face them together.

It’s more than enough for now.

“So,” Joanna says after a while, after Charlie has almost fallen back asleep surrounded by Joanna’s smell and cozy warmth. “ _Red Wolf_. Wolf-cat-whatever–That’s what you can look like when you–I mean, with the teeth and the claws and all?”

Charlie isn’t entirely sure what the question is here but she tenses up all the same because, well, this is new territory for both of them, and for once she can’t tell what Joanna is thinking.

“Well,” she says with a self-conscious clearing of the throat, “Yeah, I mean–Yeah.”

Joanna is quiet for a while and Charlie closes her eyes, resigning herself to whatever’s coming. She’s got her hand fisted in the blanket, ready to make her escape.

Joanna’s fingers curl around her cramped grip. “That’s pretty fucking awesome,” she says and Charlie can feel her smile against the back of her neck.

~*~*~

“You know,” Charlie says, “This is kind of fantastic.”

Joanna grins back at her, white teeth gleaming against the black of her mask. “Isn’t it?”

Charlie pushes her hair out of her eyes but they’re so high up the wind is relentless and it just blows straight back into her face. She looks down at the streets below them.

“But if I fall and splatter against the concrete at ninety miles an hour, I just want you to know that it’s gonna be your fault and I will come back from the dead to punch you in the face.”

“Noted,” Joanna says, unfazed by the threat.

Charlie averts her eyes from the dizzying heights and steps back from the edge. Digging the heel of her right foot into the dust to gain some leverage, she shoots a grin over to the side to where Joanna is standing and still looking over the city basked in dusk’s light.

“Last one to the crime scene pays for dinner.”

She dashes forward, kicking up gravel, and builds up speed to kick off right at the edge of the roof. One long leap, soaring through the air for one, two, three… She comes back down hard on the roof of the next building, rolling to soften the landing.

Up ahead of her, Joanna appears, hovering over the ground, floating easily, a shit-eating grin splitting her face. “Hope you’ve got your wallet on you, babe.”

“Oh, that’s just not flippin’ fair.”

Joanna laughs and flies ahead of her easily when Charlie takes off running after her. “Come on, slowpoke,” she calls back, looping, turning, and spinning in the air to mock, not even breaking a sweat.

A steady ten feet behind him, Charlie is working against the wind resistance, trying not to pant. “I swear, you’re sleeping on the couch.”

It was said low, under her breath and practically inaudible against the howl of the wind, but Joanna comes to a stop anyway, turning around and Charlie is sure she heard. She is biting her lip, obviously trying to gauge if Charlie is serious and whether she should risk it anyway.

Charlie waits her out. She knows her and she knows what she’s going to choose.

Joanna lowers himself back to the ground, toes first, and then they’re back to almost even heights. “Alright,” she says, “Hop on.”

Charlie wraps her arm around Joanna’s shoulders as she hefts her up into a piggyback. Stretching her arm out past Joanna’s head, Charlie point into the general direction of their destination and yells, “To infinity!”

Joanna sighs. “I _will_ drop you.”

“You wouldn’t,” Charlie says, not entirely convinced. She wouldn’t put it past Joanna to drop her somewhere above the far-away city lights and then catch her again after she’s screamed her lungs out during a few seconds of freefall, just for her own amusement. Charlie wraps her arms and legs around her tighter until Joanna gives a choked sound of protest.

She grumbles, “Hold on,” as if Charlie not already doing that, and then they’re off and the wind is back in Charlie’s face.

~*~*~

Charlie is kicked back on the couch, one of her legs folded underneath her, pressing all the right buttons on the game controller but not really paying all that much attention to the game. It’s one she’s played a hundred times, not requiring much focus, and Joanna is flitting around behind her, raising a ruckus.

“You okay?” Charlie asks distractedly.

“Yeah,” she replies, her voice sounding muffled as if she’s getting dressed while running around. Not that it would be the first time. “I just can’t find my–”, then, “Oh, got it.”

Charlie nods to herself. “Did something interesting happen?”

“Hm,” Joanna says non-committedly, “Plane crash about ten miles out. Have you seen my–Never mind.”

She’s hopping on one foot at the edge of Charlie’s field of vision, trying to put on her shoes while she’s already halfway out the door.

“You sure you don’t want this one?” she asks, looking around for her keys.

“It was my turn last time,” Charlie says, “I wouldn’t get there fast enough anyway. And you’re already dressed, so…”

Joanna bends over the back of the couch to press a kiss against Charlie’s cheekbone, making her scrounge up her nose in mock-disgust. “Lazy ass.” 

She pushes Joanna away. “Go save the world.”

“At once, darling,” Joanna returns, all fake obedience. “Can’t find my keys, though, so leave a window open if you go out.”

Charlie clicks her tongue and nods, even though she isn’t looking. She calls after her girlfriend, “Bring back Chinese for dinner.”

Joanna spins around, exaggerates a salute, “Yes, ma’am,” and then she’s gone, always looking like she simply vanished from the spot. The door rattles in its hinges as it slams shut behind her and Charlie returns her attention to the screen in front of her.


End file.
